Shipping company's state trustee loses job over accusations of bribery

RIGA - The privatization of the world's third largest oil transporter, the Latvian Shipping Company, has brought with it this year's first significant scandal in Latvia.

The bribery accusations allegedly made by the company's state trustee Eizens Cepurnieks to Transparency International's Latvian branch Delna, and later published in The Baltic Times, were confirmed by Delna's chairwoman Inese Voika and later reprinted in almost all local media.

As reported in last week's issue, Cepurnieks, quoting businessman Normunds Lakucs, said to Voika that former PM Andris Skele offered $1 million to Riga Mayor Andris Argalis and Parliamentary Speaker Janis Straume to ensure support for one bidder in the privatization process. Fatherland and Freedom party leader Maris Grinblats and Lakucs were also present at that meeting, Cepurnieks had added.

All those involved staunchly denied participating in such a meeting and called for the Prosecutor's Office to investigate just who the slanderer is. All except Skele are top Fatherland and Freedom party figures.

People's Party chairman Andris Skele filed a claim Jan. 29 with the Prosecutor's Office requesting a full assessment of Cepurnieks' and Voika's statements that accuse Skele of bribery.

"The entire story is an absolute lie," Skele told the Latvian LETA news agency. "I never had such meeting with these people."

Cepurnieks, who was planning to return to Latvia from his sailing holiday in Spain only on Feb.1 - the bidding deadline for the Latvian Shipping Company's privatization - was summoned home by his fellow Fatherland and Freedom party members, who are threatening to expel him from the party if he fails to give a reasonable explanation for his words.

Cepurnieks obeyed and returned to Riga on Jan. 29. He quickly dismissed all allegations that he named names to Delna. Voika must prove that the information she has provided is true, he said. Until this is done he is rejecting her statements.

"Voika should be connected to a lie detector 24 hours a day," he told journalists after the party's board meeting on Jan. 29.

Voika said that she regards the Cepurnieks' denials as intentional malevolence, Baltic News Service reported.

Delna has become an independent observer in the shipping company's privatization process. The company is a key state holding in which the government hopes to sell a 68 percent share to a strategic investor.

The agreement with Delna, the first of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe designed to eliminate the possibility of corruption inthe sell-off it, was signed by Voika and Latvian Privatization Agency director Janis Naglis on Jan. 23.

Now observers are trying to guess who is lying, Cepurnieks or Voika. Cepurnieks has already been recalled from the post of Latvian Shipping Company state trustee by Fatherland and Freedom. His employment contract was terminated Jan. 30.

Cepurnieks' name has vanished from the Fatherland and Freedom party candidate list for the forthcoming municipal elections, in which he was due to stand in the western Latvian port of Ventspils.

He was supposed to be the party's candidate for mayor of Ventspils, but was removed from the party list on the initiative of the local election commission, according to party spokesman Janis Kuzulis.

However, the Ventspils election commission chairman has denied this, explaining they would not have had the chance to cross him out so soon after they received the party list on Jan. 30.